Winter can be cold and dark and make you long for longer days. But it can also be a magical time of year when snowflakes dance through the air and icicles become exclamation points for the season.
Recently, our landscape was especially magical. Covered in a white winter lace, it appeared to be dressing up to start out the New Year. This soft white garment was not snow, however, it was rime ice. According to the weather service, rime ice is “an opaque coating of tiny, white, granular ice particles caused by the rapid freezing of supercooled water droplets on impact with an object.” In less technical terms, it’s basically fog freezing onto ice cold surfaces.
I love to photograph winter scenes, so, with camera in hand, I headed over to Tiedeman Pond Conservancy Area in Middleton to check out the rime ice. I was not disappointed.
The trees looked like the gray elder statesmen of the woods. The smaller members of the assembly, the skeletons of last summer’s vegetation, stood out neatly garbed in rows of sharply pointed ice crystals.
Except for the nearly black trees, most of the vegetation wore a shade of brown. The plant below, teasel, along with cattails and an oak tree were the only things that I could identify.
One shrub along the path was impossible to miss. It still proudly displayed its latest crop of red berries. I don’t know what it is, but a friend suggested that it might be Green Bay Bitter Berry, aka Choke Cherry. I’ll have to watch for it next spring to see if I can verify that.
I spent most of my time smiling, walking back and forth, and taking photographs. So, I probably shouldn’t spend too much time “talking” here. Just sit back and enjoy more of my rime ice photos in the gallery below.
(Click on any photo to enlarge, then use arrows to scroll through the images.)
Winter’s here. Make the most of it!
